Friday, August 13, 2010. Absinthe At Antoine's, With Friends. I have an invitation to dine tonight from Patti and John Poche. Patti used to sell air time at the radio station, but I didn't get to know her and her husband John (who creates software systems for radio stations) until their son Zack and our son Jude got to know one another at Christian Brothers School and Jesuit. In fact, it's even more indirect than that. We first connected at a party at the home of Mark and Deborah Hymel, whose son also was Jude's classmate. Mark is the guy who introduced me to a funny frozen drink called Ping Pong. It tastes like a nectar soda, and is so luscious that the recipe is in my cookbook. After several more parties with all these people, I began calling John and Patti now and then to go out to dinner. And I miss them, now that John left town for a job on the West Coast a year or so ago.
They left the choice of restaurant to me. The Poches and the Hymels all liked the idea of Antoine's.
Still free of the radio show, I left the Cool Water Ranch at five, with the faint hope that Harold Klein could cut my hair in the basement of the Royal Orleans before dinner. He sometimes stays late on Fridays, but no dice tonight. To kill time, I took a look at the new Antoine's Annex. It's a coffee and pastry shop with ice cream and sandwiches and salads on the restaurant's Royal Street flank, in a space they'd leased for years to a gallery. Looked nice, but the employees seemed desultory and bored. No customers. But who would be walking on the street in this heat?
I've drunk many drinks at Antoine's. But tonight was the first time I had one before dinner in the bar. Mostly this is because there was no bar there until late in 2008. Adding to the auspiciousness of this moment, I asked for an absinthe, served in the traditional way. This only came to mind when I saw the glass reservoir filled with ice and water on the back bar. (Bottom center in the photo.) That's the traditional apparatus for serving absinthe, as is the ornately perforated absinthe "spoon." (An absinthe spoon could serve no standard spoon function.) The bartender spanned a rock glass with the spoon, on top of which was a cube of sugar. The ice water drizzled down in a thin stream, diluting and sweetening the green absinthe in the glass.
Drinking absinthe in the bar at Antoine's! How Old New Orleans can you get? All I need now is an appointment with a prostitute in Storyville.
The Poches and the Hymels fetched up at around seven-thirty. We had another round of drinks in the bar, and opened Topic A: which colleges all our kids have got off to. All but one of them are in universities, and most of them at LSU.
John Poche is full of unlikely but good stories. Watching the television show in which Anthony Bourdain and I had lunch at Antoine's a couple of years ago, John saw a picture of his father in the background. Not only that, but he knew where a framed testimonial from his grandfather was on the wall in Antoine's Dungeon. Antoine's is apparently the official Poche Family restaurant.
The great thing about restaurants whose menus don't change much is that you start anticipating the dinner the minute you make the reservation. I've mentally salivated about this repast for days. We would begin by splitting an entree-size crabmeat au gratin, a dish at which Antoine's excels. The matrix of white sauce and cheese is so light as to be fluffy. (The appetizer version is inexplicably expensive, but the entree splits well four ways at a reasonable price.)
Everybody went along with that plan, along with my suggestion that we divide two of orders of baked oysters (Rockefeller, Bienville, and thermidor). One plate of oysters Foch was in the order for John, who says it's impossible for him to eat here without oysters Foch.
But before any of that arrived, we were treated to a surprise from the chef. Champignons sous cloche--mushrooms under glass. That unique, rich specialty hasn't been on the menu for decades. It doesn't sound like a good idea: squares of toast spread with pate de foie gras, covered with sliced mushrooms cooked in a bechamel with a little sherry. Elegantly decadent. Nice presentation, too: it's served under glass bells, lifted off the plates at the table. (Randy Guste once told me that the reason they don't serve the dish often is that the glass bells don't seem to last more that two or three uses before being broken.)
The entree on my mind was the double lamb chops. Antoine's buys superlative lamb and grills it simply and well. I avoid the mint jelly, of course. That old touch will linger here as long as do customers old enough to remember when all lamb dishes were served with the wiggly green gunk. Bring me bearnaise.
Elsewhere on the table grilled pompano, fried soft shell crabs, and trout amandine entertained. As did a bottle of Grand Cru Chablis, followed by a bottle from my pile that I've been looking at thirstily for the past few months: Sassicaia 1992, a big, well-aged Super Tuscan.
The conversation, naturally enough, kept returning to our brilliant kids. A lot of shared history here. Jude, for example, learned how to drive on an old tractor at the Hymel family's vast sugar cane fields in Convent. He and his buddy Preston Hymel even learned how to use a clutch on that thing.
The Poches say they love Los Angeles, but they still have a house here in New Orleans. I'll get Jude to take them out to dinner sometime.
Antoine's. French Quarter: 713 St. Louis St. 581-4422.
